SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA (September 13, 2018) – A.G. Kawamura, co-chair of Solutions from the Land (SfL), today endorsed the Global Soil Health Challenge launched today at the Global Climate Action Summit in San Francisco.
The challenge will call on national and sub-national governments to promote the development of healthy soils within their own geographies and report back on their progress a year from now at the 2019 UN Climate Summit in New York. The Soil Health Challenge was developed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture together with SfL, the UN Foundation and partners collaborating under the North America Climate Smart Agriculture Alliance (NACSAA).
A fruit and vegetable producer and shipper, and a former Secretary of the California Department of Food and Agriculture, Kawamura stated:
“Today’s announcement is strong evidence of the momentum behind the soil health movement in this country. Soil health is a primary pathway in scaling up land-based solutions to global challenges, the mission of Solutions from the Land. Farmers and ranchers who make their livings and homes on the lands they work and steward should be at the center of efforts to develop consensus around state-specific soil health programs.
“Farmer commitment to soil health will be critical in U.S. agriculture’s efforts to meet an exploding demand for food, feed, fiber and fuel by a global population expected to grow by some 25 percent by 2050.
“The Global Soil Health Challenge is a critical tool in Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA). While it embraces one of CSA’s three pillars by reducing emissions, it touches on the concept’s other two pillars by increasing crop yields and restoring degraded lands. Improving soil health enables farmers to produce the food needed for a growing world population and eliminate the need to expand into previously protected ecosystems for agriculture, all while increasing producer incomes.
“The Soil Health Challenge is an effort that we support and one that can foster a wide range of economic, environmental and public health benefits.”
Solutions from the Land (SfL) is a not-for-profit corporation focused on land-based solutions to global challenges. SfL’s mission is to identify and facilitate the implementation of policies, practices and projects at a landscape scale that will result in land being sustainably managed to produce food, feed, fiber and energy while protecting and improving critical environmental resources and delivering high value solutions to combat climate change. For more on Solutions from the Land, click HERE.
